Young jobseekers suffer cruellest cut

THIS state’s de facto invitation to young trades people and graduates to emigrate is clearly the cruellest cut of all in the budget.

Brian Lenihan senior cynically proclaimed “the island was too small for all of us” during the FF-made recession in the 1980s.

His more cerebral son was not so explicit but every bit as sincere in his crafting of a decision to humiliate and starve young people into leaving. Not many of them enjoy life on welfare. They don’t need to be forced to take jobs – they desperately want a job and the dignity it brings.

The idea that young graduates should have to sit in groups being told by a civil servant how to write a CV is a savage blow. Rather than spitefully push them onto planes, we should give them a year’s advance welfare payment. Facilitating dignified emigration would be to recognise the reality of the Government’s stealth policy on forced emigration.

Giving young people 10,000, with the proviso that they forego the right to claim welfare in this state for a year, would be an honest gesture and a recognition of the true nature of government policy.

I commend it to the minister.

Declan Doyle

Lisdowney

Kilkenny